Decoys are well known and used by waterfowlers to lure live birds within shooting range. Traditionally, such decoys were carved of wood or cork. Now it is commonplace to mold the decoy body from plastic. The decoys can by static with no moving parts, either in full body with legs or with a keel, which can be weighted to maintain an upright position when on water. Static decoys are suited for replicating waterfowl at rest or floating on water. Motion decoys, on the other hand, are intended to replicate a bird in flight and provide a more realistic representation of the bird.
One common type of motion decoy is a spinner type decoy. Spinner decoys have wings that revolve about a single axis with respect to the decoy body. The wings are typically made from fabric or thin plastic material, such as PVC, and are coupled to a battery powered motor within the body of the decoy. The wings can be coupled directly to the shafts of two motors or a single double-ended motor. The wings could also be coupled to the motor by a belt and pulley arrangement. The wings are generally unrealistic with plain coloring, usually of contrasting colors on each to create a flash of color (such as white) as the wings revolve. However, some spinner decoys have wings with decals or printing that resembles feathers. Some are even flocked with fibers or other materials to provide greater realism.
Another common type of motion decoy is a flapper type decoy. Flapper decoys can have similar wing structures as spinner decoys, but they differ in that rather than simply revolving the wings, they are driven to impart an angular motion to the wings. One common way to achieve such angular movement is by connecting the inner ends of the wings to the decoy body, such as by hinges, and then rotatably coupling the wings to bent drive shafts. As the drive shafts rotate with respect to the wings, they pull and push on the wings to move the up and down about their hinges. Such angular movement creates a flapping motion that is better suited to replicate a bird in flight than the static decoys.
One problem with existing motion decoys is that the angular motion imparted to the wings does not present a realistic wing beat motion. For one thing, due to the bent shaft mechanism used to move the wings in the typical flapper decoy, the wings sweep through only an acute angle that is significantly less than that of live waterfowl. Also, due to the hinged connection of the wings the typical flapper decoy pivots each wing about a single axis albeit at an angle to the motor shaft axis unlike in spinner decoys. The existing motion decoys thus lack the realism of the compound movements that occur during the wing beat of live waterfowl. Moreover, simply replicating a flight motion as the prior motion decoys do does not present the live waterfowl with a naturally inviting environment, as does a lighting motion indicative of landing. As a result, existing motion decoys have become counterproductive in that their lack of realism has effectively become a marker for astute waterfowl to avoid.
This disclosure addresses these problems.